The justices' 5-4 decision is the first time that the high court has ruled that profit-seeking businesses can hold religious views under federal law.

Demonstrator react to hearing the Supreme Court's decision on the Hobby Lobby case outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, June 30, 2014. The Supreme Court says corporations can hold religious objections that allow them to opt out of the new health law requirement that they cover contraceptives for women.(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

This May 22, 2013 file photo shows customers at a Hobby Lobby store in Denver. The Supreme Court says corporations can hold religious objections that allow them to opt out of the new health law requirement that they cover contraceptives for women. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that some corporations can hold religious objections that allow them to opt out of the new health law requirement that they cover contraceptives for women.

The justices' 5-4 decision is the first time that the high court has ruled that profit-seeking businesses can hold religious views under federal law. And it means the Obama administration must search for a different way of providing free contraception to women who are covered under objecting companies' health insurance plans.

Contraception is among a range of preventive services that must be provided at no extra charge under the health care law that President Barack Obama signed in 2010 and the Supreme Court upheld two years later.

Two years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts cast the pivotal vote that saved the health care law in the midst of Obama's campaign for re-election.

On Monday, dealing with a small sliver of the law, Roberts sided with the four justices who would have struck down the law in its entirety.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion. The court's four liberal justices dissented.

The court stressed that its ruling applies only to corporations that are under the control of just a few people in which there is no essential difference between the business and its owners.

Alito also said the decision is limited to contraceptives under the health care law. "Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer's religious beliefs," Alito said.

He suggested two ways the administration could ensure women get the contraception they want. It could simply pay for pregnancy prevention, he said.

Or it could provide the same kind of accommodation it has made available to religious-oriented, not-for-profit corporations. Those groups can tell the government that providing the coverage violates their religious beliefs. At that point, the groups' insurers or a third-party administrator takes on the responsibility of paying for the birth control.

The accommodation is the subject of separate legal challenges, but the court said Monday that the profit-seeking companies could not assert religious claims in such a situation.

The administration said a victory for the companies would prevent women who work for them from making decisions about birth control based on what's best for their health, not whether they can afford it. The government's supporters pointed to research showing that nearly one-third of women would change their contraceptive if cost were not an issue; a very effective means of birth control, the intrauterine device, can cost up to $1,000.

The contraceptives at issue before the court were the emergency contraceptives Plan B and ella, and two IUDs.

Nearly 50 businesses have sued over covering contraceptives. Some, like those involved in the Supreme Court case, are willing to cover most methods of contraception, as long as they can exclude drugs or devices that the government says may work after an egg has been fertilized. Other companies object to paying for any form of birth control.

There are separate lawsuits challenging the contraception provision from religiously affiliated hospitals, colleges and charities.

A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found 85 percent of large American employers already had offered such coverage before the health care law required it.

It is unclear how many women potentially are affected by the high court ruling. The Hobby Lobby chain of arts-and-crafts stores is by far the largest employer of any company that has gone to court to fight the birth control provision.

Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby has more than 15,000 full-time employees in more than 600 crafts stores in 41 states. The Greens are evangelical Christians who also own Mardel, a Christian bookstore chain.

The other company is Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. of East Earl, Pa., owned by a Mennonite family and employing 950 people in making wood cabinets.

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The hypocrisy of the Green family in putting Hobby Lobby 401(k) money into investments in pharmaceutical companies with a significant return from selling contraceptives was not in evidence and not considered by the court.

So this decision will be yet another imperfectly decided on partial facts.

I suspect that the female employees of Hobby Lobby will be glad to know that the Stone Age religious views of the Green Family now apply to them unless they take on the burden of seeking health insurance outside of work.

Good point, Nowhereland. The Green family argued the AHA provision conflicted with their religious freedom and they won. But the impact was always on those who had no religious scruples about contraception and would get prescriptions for birth control pills under Hobby Lobby coverage. Those same women can and will look elsewhere for contraceptives.

So the net effect of this decision is zero when it comes to contraceptive use.

And Nowhereland, women can always go to Mexico and buy contraceptives cheaply and bring them back across the border, as long as they are not searched by Texas law enforcement.

I wouldn't necessarily say that the net effect is zero because health plans outside of Hobby Lobby may be more expensive as would paying out of pocket for a medication women need. Kind of like having to drive to Mexico from any part of the nation.

Expect the public to develop a deeply held religious objection to shopping at Hobby Lobby.

The SCOTUS blog also states that under the Hobby Lobby decision, the government can pay for contraceptive coverage itself so that women receive it. So what in effect can happen is that the cost of paying for contraception is transferred from private entities to the public thus providing universal contraception coverage for women that are employed and unemployed.

BTW, ruling against contraception and limiting abortion rights does not bode well for heterosexual behavior.

Just like it is Hobby Lobby's right to choose not to provide this type of health coverage, it is also anybody else's right to choose not to work for them or shop at their stores because of this. We are not entitled to anything other than how we choose to believe.

@JAA If you need a job you can't be choosy. Since 2008 jobs have not been all that plentiful. And the problem here is not the Greens' beliefs but how they use their power as employers to force those beliefs on employees. Do Christian Scientists who do not believe in intrusive medical treatment have the right to design their employee health coverage accordingly?

@Top Cat The case and the Supreme Court decision applies to all contraception from what I can tell. If this were about pills that prevent implantation of the zygote, it sure seems not to have presented that way in court.

Since that opinion in the 60s found a right of sexual or bedroom or reproductive privacy, this case could have been a head to head conflict between constitutional rights. I'm wondering what the dissenting opinions will say.

We don't know what gasoline or oils we buy come from a Koch refinery. Back when I worked for the Diamond Shamrock distributor, we knew the truckloads of gasoline came from the company refinery up in the panhandle. But now? I have no clue.

And the Kochs own Georgia Pacific, and that means a lot of building materials I use weekly, as well as toilet tissue, paper towels and so on. Plus Koch Industries own fertilizer manufacturers. I don't know which ones come from Koch companies.

Let's ask our congressperson to introduce a bill requiring the labeling of all Koch Industries products as such. :) Think Neugebauer will go for it? :)))

of Emperor "O" is called to heel once more, for trampling ourConstitutional freedoms ---as well as grossly overstepping his authority. It's getting to be a habit.

Each and every time the local and national LKB defend him so deafeningly, you bring your party and your ideology lower.

At the beginning of 2009, you wielded almpost unprecedented political clout. Bit by bit it has been squandered, wasted, allowed to evaporate away.

Scandal after scandal, until the words "faux" and "phony" have been overused into meaninglessness ---not that they were ever particularly believable in the mouths of the Emperor's prevaricating minions. Richard M. Nixon was brought low for FAR less offense.

Time after time "O" has been ruled to have completely overstepped the bounds of the authority given by the Constitution to our Chief Executive.

Dishonesty is his "default setting". The man will absolutely climb a tree to lie when the truth would have served him perfectly well flat-footed on the ground.

His foreign policies have failed on a scale so astounding that it has no equal among any of our past Presidents. We have no credibility left in the world, among either ememies or allies.

Yet you still blythely defend him!

If it were not for the terrible damage done to our nation, I would say to the kazoo tooters of the LKB, "GREAT job, guys! Keep it up! By the time you are finished defending the absolute worst world leader in several centuries, there won't be enough left of your party or your ideology to further trouble anyone!"

From the jaws of almost total victory, you have managed to snatch ignominious defeat.

I realize that you cannot boycott all of their products, but you can boycott that brands that you know about. Their fertilizers are probably in many other brands, but their paper products I know about.

You can Google the Koch Brothers and get a partial list of what they make. Boycotting them will not break them by any means, but at least they won't have as much of my money as they could.

When I was at Tech, Phillips had a refinery somewhere near Lubbock and it seems their trucks would fill up everybody.

I'm not really sure where the liberals are going with the Kochs in this case. Other than they hear the demented Harry Reid rant on and on about the Kochs. They employ about 60,000 people in the USA and a lot of those are union jobs. I hope you refuse treatment in one of those hospitals built by the Kochs!